Blockchain: Great opportunities For Healthcare

Blockchain technology has the potential to transform healthcare, put patients at the heart of the healthcare ecosystem and enhance the privacy and interoperability of medical data.

Blockchain – A new model for health information exchange

This technology can provide a new model for health information exchange (HIE) by making electronic health records more efficient, interrupted, and confidential. Although it is not a panacea, this fast-paced new field provides fertile ground for testing, investing and proof-of-concept testing.

Blockchain’s health challenge

A team from Deloitte Consulting LLP has won a blockchain ideation challenge funded by the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Coordinator for Information Technology Health (ONC). Deloitte’s White Paper describes the opportunity to apply blockchain technology for health care to health information exchanges (HIEs) that are safer, more effective and more compatible. The article has been selected from over 70 submissions from many individuals, organizations and companies addressing the ways in which blockchain technology can be used in health and IT health to protect, manage and exchange. Electronic health information.

What is Blockchain and how can it provide the opportunity for healthcare?

A blockchain health information exchange support can unlock the true value of interoperability. Blockchain-based systems have the ability to reduce or eliminate friction and the cost of existing intermediaries.
The promise of blockchain has wide implications for the stakeholders in the healthcare ecosystem. Leveraging this technology it is possible to connect fragmentation systems to better understand and evaluate the value of care. In the long run, a nationwide blockchain network for electronic health records can improve efficiency and support better health outcomes for patients.

A new model for health information exchange

What is Blockchain?

At its core, blockchain is a distributed system log and stores transaction logs. More specifically, blockchain is a shared, unchanged record of peer-to-peer transactions that are built from linked transactions and stored in digital books. Blockchain-based encryption techniques are set up to allow each participant in the network to interact (eg, store, exchange and view information), without prior trust between the parties. In the blockchain system, there is no central right; Instead, transaction logs are stored and distributed to all network participants. Blockchain interactions are known and require network verification before the information is added, allowing untrusted collaboration between network participants while recording the invariant audit trail of all both interactions.

Blockchain as an enabler of interoperability across the country

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has issued a shared national roadmap identifying the important policies and technical components needed for interoperability across the country, include:

Secure, common network infrastructure

Verify the identity and authenticity of all participants

The consistency of access to electronic health information and other requirements.

However, current technologies do not fully address these requirements, because they face the same constraints associated with security, privacy, and ecosystem-wide interoperability.

Challenges and considerations

Blockchain technology presents many opportunities for health care; However, it does not fully mature today nor is a panacea can be applied immediately. A number of economic, technical, organizational and behavioral challenges must be addressed before a health care blockchain can be adopted by organizations nationwide.

Shaping blockchain futures

Blockchain technology creates unique opportunities to reduce complexity, enable unreliable collaboration, and produce secure and invasive information. HHS has the right to track this rapidly evolving field to identify trends and sensory areas that need government support for technology to realize its full potential in health care. In order to shape the future of blockchain, HHS should consider mapping and convening the blockchain ecosystem, establishing a blockchain framework to coordinate early adopters and support a dialogue and discovery group.